An unhinged Anglo-Irish sitcom by Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews, about a tiny parish on a miserable little island off the coast of Ireland where the Catholic Church has sent three of its most embarrassing members: the embezzler Father Ted Crilly, the idiotic manchild Father Dougal McGuire, and the drunken, violent, foul-mouthed skirt-chaser Father Jack Hackett. Their housekeeper is Mrs. Doyle, who is really dedicated to serving tea. The majority of episodes involved Ted's efforts to either get away from the island or make a nice pile of cash, neither of which he ever succeeded in doing.

A cult hit in Britain and Ireland, the writers never planned to continue it beyond its third season. Star Dermot Morgan (who played Ted) died one day after finishing filming of the final episode, resulting in the common misconception that the show was cancelled because of this.

Flame wars can break out over whether the show should be considered Irish (its writers, cast, settings and exterior locations were all Irish) or British (it was produced by a British company for a British TV channel). Came eleventh in Britain's Best Sitcom. It is very popular in Ireland, regularly repeated on Irish television, and lines from the show are quoted about as often as Brits quote Monty Python.

In "A Song for Europe", Fr. Dick Byrne's dramatic ballad ("When I was young, I had a dream / And though the dream was very small, it wouldn't leave me") is an affectionate parody of 60s MOR ballads by the likes of Lee Hazlewood or Anthony Newley & Leslie Bricusse (especially "What Kind of Fool Am I").

The writers freely admit that "Speed 3" is a blatant attempt to write a Speed sequel with the lowest possible stakes imaginable.

Air Guitar: Dougal plays some air guitar to Tina Turner in the first episode. Dougal even mimes putting the guitar back onto its stand!

Guest character Henry Sellers is also this. A sip of champagne is enough to set him off.

Henry: Sack me? Sack me? I made the BBC!

Ambiguously Bi: Jack sleepwalks (naked) into Bishop Brennan's bedroom and climbs into bed with him. He later wakes up, makes no attempt to leave and goes back to sleep with him. He was also a huge fan of the St. Tibulus film, which according to Dougal's account, has some gay sex acts in it.

Anachronic Order: Series 2 is explicitly set in the then-present day on 1996 with the opening episode, "Hell", taking place on the 19th of July. In the fifth episode, "A Song For Europe", it's mentioned that the competition is in May and there's a six week Time Skip between the last scene and the end credits. The eighth episode, "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", is set during Lent 1996, which began on the 21st of February (Ash Wednesday) and ended on the 7th of April (Easter Sunday). "Rock A Hula Ted", the sixth episode, is implied to take place at some point during the summer of 1996 as well, given that Craggy Island is having a Lovely Girls festival.

Annoying Laugh: Father Barty Dunne, as seen in "Competition Time", has a laugh that would not be annoying in itself were it not for the fact that he can't get through a single sentence without breaking down laughing, and when he does finally get to the end of a sentence to explain the joke, it's either completely mundane or falls squarely under "You had to be there (and even then you probably wouldn't have laughed)." Four hours of having to listen to this endless, easily-triggered laughter in the car journey to the parochial house has taken its toll on Henry Sellers.

Artistic License – Animal Care: Largely avoided in "The Plague", but the cage that the Bishop finds seems too small for a rabbit - they need plenty of room to be satisfied about their environment. Rabbit cages should be at least five times larger than the rabbit that goes into them.

Artistic License – Geography: When Bishop Brennan indicates an island off the coast of Suriname on a globe, he points to somewhere in the centre of the USA.

Artistic License – Law: In "The Mainland", Mrs Doyle makes reference to a robbery involving one of her friends. Ted asks her if the robbers took much, showing that he knows the correct definition of a robbery, but then it becomes apparent that she thinks "robbery" and "kidnapping" are the same thing ("she was robbed, they stole her"), when in fact they are not.

Artistic License – Military: Father Williams is shot by a soldier using a Sterling submachinegun. The Sterling was never used by the Irish Army and the FN FALs seen carried by the other soldiers in that scene were replaced by the Steyr AUG in 1988 (though the FAL was still used by reservists until 2001 and still sees limited use by the Navy to this day). Even the British Army phased the Sterling out in 1994, two years before the episode was filmed.

As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The ending of "A Song for Europe" contains poor French (using the usual Eurovision use of 'nil points' as though it were actual French), poor German (the German for Ireland is "Irland", not "Irlande" as in French), poor Dutch (it should be 'Ierland, geen punten', not 'Irlande, nil punten') and random gibberish that is supposed to be various European languages

Be Yourself: Ted makes the terrible mistake of giving this advice to Dougal.

Big Entrance: Bishop Brennan makes an unforgettable entrance running towards the camera screaming with his 10ft-wide cloak billowing behind him once he figures out that Ted really did kick him up the arse.

Bizarro Universe: The priests of Rugged Island are similar enough to the main priests.

The Bore: Father Austin Purcell is described by Ted as the most boring priest in the world. When we see him, he has Jack cornered in a storage room, rambling on about how he saved money on his energy bills. According to Ted, the inhabitants of a Nigerian village were so bored by him, that they fled in a large boat which sank quickly and they were subsequently eaten by alligators.

Breaking the Fourth Wall: Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest closes with Father Jack looking towards the camera and telling the viewer to 'feck off.'

Amazingly, the brick itself is both literal and figurative, as well as being a Chekhov's Brick in that it returns again for a less humorous purpose and yet again for a humorous one.

Britcom: There is a lot of debate over whether it counts as a Britcom or not - the show was a sitcom made for British TV by a British production company but almost everything else about it (writers, actors, setting) is Irish.

Cardboard Boxes: Spoofed in the "Speed 3" episode. There's a big stack of neatly arranged boxes in the middle of the road, which Ted moves one by one out of the path of the milk float, then drives right through them with his own car.

The Casanova: Pat Mustard. He basically has sex with more or less every woman on Craggy Island when doing his rounds.

Casual Sports Jersey: Father Dougal often wears a soccer jersey for pyjamas, emphasizing his characterization as an eccentric manchild.

The perfectly square bit of dirt pointed out by Ted near the start of the episode "Are You Right There Father Ted?" later comes back to haunt him, as does the massive amount of Nazi memorabilia owned by the priest Ted visits at the beginning of the episode.

After seemingly getting away with kicking Bishop Brennan up the arse, a completely inebriated Ted orders Dougal to make hundreds of copies of the photograph he took of the deed, including a 10-by-10, blown-up copy. When Brennan returns to Craggy Island, he eventually sees the incriminating photo, propped up against the side of the parochial house (because Dougal thought that meant 10x10 feet), and he realises that Ted did indeed kick him up the arse.

Chewing the Scenery: It's a little known fact that after every scene with Bishop Brennan, the set had to be rebuilt because he chewed so much.

Christmas Episode: "A Christmassy Ted", where Ted is awarded the Golden Cleric on Christmas day for covering up a scandal involving him and a number of other priests accidentally wandering into the lingerie section of a department store.

Cloudcuckoolander: Ted, but especially Dougal, Jack and Mrs. Doyle. Arguably Father Noel Furlong is the biggest cloudcuckoolander of them all.

Ted realises the babies entered into Craggy Island's Beautiful Baby contest all have suspiciously similar hairstyles to Pat Mustard. Dougal's first thought is that the babies are all copying his style.

In the same episode, Ted presents Pat's manager with photographic evidence of Pat's indiscretions. Pat's manager responds by telling Ted how much he's willing to pay for the dirty photos.

Again in the same episode, the priests realise that Dougal's situation is similar to the scenario of a certain action film, but randomly guess the wrong one.

Also, this little gem from the episode "The Plague", regarding Bishop Brennan's phobia of rabbits:

Dougal:[shouting up the stairs] Ted, did Len find the rabbits? Bishop Brennan: What did he just say?! Ted: Ah, I can explain... Bishop Brennan: Did he call me Len again? [shouting down the stairs] You address me by my proper title, you little bollocks!

When Father Ted sees Niamh Connolly on television spreading crazy conspiracy theories about the Catholic Church, his reaction is, "As if there were anything sinister about that!"

During the "Lovely Girls" competition.

Ted: And, Alice there has a lovely bottom. Host: Careful there, we don't want to offend any of the girls. Ted: Quite right. Of course, theyallhave lovely bottoms.

Compressed Abstinence: For Lent, Ted decides to give up cigarettes, Dougal rollerblading, and on Jack's behalf, Ted makes a vow that Jack will give up drinking. After they can't go one day without succumbing they call in a specialist, who turns out to be quite insane, and eventually they do a turnaround and indulge these things to a greater degree than they did before.

Compressed Vice: Dougal's passion for rollerblading is not mentioned outside of the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading"; Linehan and Mathews simply thought it would be a funny "vice" for Dougal to have to give up for Lent while Ted gave up smoking and Jack gave up drinking.

Confessional: Seeing as the protagonists are priests, it's a given. Ted uses it just to get juicy gossip about his parishioners.

Continuity Nod: Near the end of "Entertaining Father Stone", Father Stone's parents show Ted a painting their son made of himself with a smiling Father Ted standing behind him with his hands on his shoulders as a mark of how much he looks up to Ted. The painting can be seen on the wall above the fireplace in the parochial house in Series 2 and 3.

Corrupt Church: Many of the priests are dodgy characters with various shady dealings:

Ted once inappropriated some funds from a sick child and went to Las Vegas with the proceeds. When he temporarily gets reassigned to a cushy parish in Dublin, he gets sent back after some irregularities in his expenses.

Bishop Brennan has been having secret affairs and even has a secret son in America.

Father Billy "The Spinmaster" is a gambling addict who steals the proceeds from a raffle to pay off his debts.

Father Williams is caught with a box of guns in his house, implied to be for the IRA.

Both Arthur Mathews and Graham Linehan played various parts throughout the series: Linehan plays Father Gallagher, who suggests that the crisis on board the plane could be solved by "having a bit of an old pray" in "Flight into Terror" and Mathews plays Father Ben in the titular self-deprecating Show Within a Show, which appears in the episode "The Plague".

The show's producer, Geoffrey Perkins, provides the voice of Father Jose Fernandez's translator in "The Passion of St Tibulus".

Curse Cut Short: A visual example. When Jack is left in a department store creche, he assembles his three favourite words in alphabet blocks. Cut to him with only one gap remaining, "F-CK", hesitating to put down a block with both an "E" and a "U" on it... but he's called away before he can decide.

After getting kicked by Ted in the episode "Kicking Bishop Brennan Up the Arse", Bishop Brennan remains in a state of shocked disbelief for the time it takes him to fly to Rome for an audience with the Pope, at which point he finally snaps out of it with a roar of "He did kick me up the arse!". And then shoves His Holiness out of the way and rushes back to Ireland.

Not to mention screaming "God damn it!" in the middle of the Vatican.

After destroying a car that was sent to be raffled off, Ted is completely calm at first, then abruptly starts freaking out in the middle of the night.

In "Flight into Terror", Ted is too pumped up by being in mortal peril to be scared as he climbs outside of the plane in mid-flight to fix the fuel pump. After fixing it and averting the crisis, he immediately begins freaking out as he remembers his fear of flying.

Alan: Well, it's been an easy decision. There's one out-and-out winner; and, rather than waste time with the speech, I'll get on with the job of announcing the winner, who, today, has come first in this competition to see who the winner is in the King of the Sheep competition that we have all come to today, wondering who indeed will it be who wins the prize of King of the Sheep. The winner of this year's King of the Sheep competition is... Ted: Stop! This contest is a sham, and a fraud, and a... sham!

The Ditz: Dougal, mostly. He doesn't even understand depth perception. He thought the cows he saw in the distance were actually really tiny cows.

Dramatically Missing the Point: In "The Plague", Ted and Dougal ask Tom if he would like to "take care" of the rabbits, i.e. take them in and show affection and love. However, Tom thinks they mean him to kill the rabbits, so that's what he sets about practising for.

Sister Assumpta, who comes over to assist Ted and Dougal with their Lenten vows in "Cigarettes, Alcohol, and Rollerblading". She bathes them in ice, replaces their mattresses with bricks, and shoots at them.

Dumbass Has a Point: For all his idiocy, Dougal does occasionally come up with a plan or idea that genuinely impresses Ted.

In "Are You Right There, Father Ted?", when Ted is accused of being racist towards Craggy Island's new Chinese residents, Dougal tells him to hold a presentation praising Chinese culture, as a gesture of good faith. It may count as a subversion, though: when Ted asks Dougal to follow up on his brilliant idea, poor Dougal panics, as he didn't think coming up with a good idea would be so much work. And the Chinese family didn't actually enjoy the presentation, but they appreciated the free drinks afterwards.

Early Installment Weirdness: Graham Linehan calls himself out on this in the scripts book, noting that the first episode they wrote - "Grant Unto Him Eternal Rest", which aired as the finale of season 1 - has some rather weird out-of-character moments, like Ted reciting poetry and Ted and Dougal seemingly plotting to kill Jack at the end. The earliest episodes also feature a brighter parochial house, and a slightly cleaner Father Jack.

Easy Evangelism: Somehow, Dougal unintentionally talks a bishop into abandoning religion. In a single (offscreen) conversation. Then again, the bishop was already having a crisis of faith.

John and Mary O'Leary, a couple who run the general store on the island, hate each other and are always encountered just as they perpetrate some violence on each other, and then immediately act as if nothing is wrong.

Elvis Impersonator: Parodied. Ted comes up with the idea of dressing up as Elvis Presley for an all-priest lookalike competition and shows it off only to discover that Dougal and Jack have ripped the idea off from him. Ted eventually finds a workaround that the three of them enter as a trio with Dougal as Early!Elvis, Ted as Comeback Special!Elvis and an extremely dishevelled Jack as Vegas!Elvis.

Dougal enters the room with his face completely covered in shaving cream. When Ted points it out to him, he reacts with surprise since he didn't even shave that morning.

Even the Subtitler Is Stumped: When Niamh Connolly is shown performing her latest song on TV, there's a woman using sign language to convey the song's lyrics for the deaf. About halfway through, she simply shrugs and gives up translating.

Dick Byrne. After managing to convince Ted that he is giving up cigarettes for Lent near the start of "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", and encouraging Ted to do the same, he puts the phone down, lights a cigarette and starts laughing evilly.

A particularly unusual variant occurs with Father Dougal: he walks to the wrong side of an open door, missing an exit that is right in front of him. It's not clear if the writers knew it, but this is similar to a gag in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (involving Dopey, of course).

In the Christmas Special when Ted, Dougal and several other priests try to sneak out of a lingerie section of a store that they accidentally wandered into so that it won't cause a public scandal, they hijack a P.A system so they can say the store is closing to lure out the shoppers. However when they start wandering around aimlessly...

Ted: (Hijacks P.A) NOT THAT WAY FOR FECKS SAKE, THE OTHER WAY!!!

Exposition Diagram: Parodied and subverted in "Speed 3". The priests attempting to help Dougal out are drawing up various diagrams of plans to help out. After Ted has a Eureka Moment and scribbles his plan on the board. His plan is to put the brick on the accelerator, and we then see the board where he has simply written WE PUT THE BRICK ON THE ACCELERATOR.

Failure Gambit: "My Lovely Horse" gets chosen as the Irish entry for the Eurovision Song Contest so that Ireland will lose and will not have to incur the cost of hosting the Contest another year. Mission accomplished, as the song absolutely bombs.

Fainting: "Entertaining Father Stone" features a hilarious example as Ted reveals to Dougal that the guest in the next room is the excruciatingly dull Father Stone:

[Dougal enters the front room of the parochial house as Ted tries and fails to get any sort of conversation out of Father Stone]Ted:[jumps up from his chair]Oh, Dougal, you wanted to have a word, fair enough, won't be a moment, see you in a minute, Father.[barrels a startled Dougal out into the corridor, then closes the door after him and sighs with exasperation]Dougal: What's up with you, Ted? Who was that? Ted:[gasps for breath as he takes out a pack of cigarettes and removes one] Oh... I had to get out of there! [puts the cigarette in his mouth]Dougal:[smiling] Who is it, Ted? Ted: Now Dougal... don't overreact. Dougal: Fair enough. Ted:[lights the cigarette, then closes his lighter and takes a drag off the cigarette] Right... it's Father Stone. [Dougal drops to the floor like a puppet that's had its strings cut] Dougal, get up. [Dougal gets up again immediately]Dougal: Oh, Ted, no, not him. Ted: It's him all right. Dougal: God Almighty! [later, after Ted drags Dougal into the room to keep him company as he resumes his unsuccessful attempts to engage Father Stone in conversation]Ted: So! What time you going back tomorrow? Father Stone: I might stay. Ted:[as Dougal goes weak at the knees and grabs Ted's arm for support] ... what?? Father Stone: I say, I might stay. Ted: ... how long? Father Stone: Oh, I don't know. A few weeks, maybe. [Dougal falls to the floor]

Fan Convention: The annual Ted Fest. Distinguished from other Cons by actually taking place on a tiny island off the Irish coast (Inishmore); features a Lovely Girls contest, 5-a-side football, talent show, and drunk students yelling catchphrases ad nauseam.

Le Film Artistique: The title film in "The Passion of St. Tibulus" is apparently this judging from Ted and Dougal's bewildered conversation the evening after seeing it; it features copious nudity and a plot that makes absolutely no sense. Ted is most puzzled by St. Tibulus wearing so little clothing, noting that "he was from Norway or somewhere, he'd have frozen to death!"

Being a subbed French film firmly puts it in this category.

Film Noir: Part of "A Christmassy Ted", when Father Todd Unctious states his motivations.

Averted with Dougal, whose idiocy was played down less as the series went on with him at times proving smarter than Ted.

Played straight with Ted's smoking - at first it's something he's occasionally seen doing, but late in Series 2 it turns out that five minutes without a cigarette causes him to break out in a sweat and become unable to think about anything else.

Also done with Mrs Doyle and her tea-making habits. In Series 1 she makes tea for Ted, Dougal and Jack quite often. In Series 2 she offers them a cup nearly every time she appears and it's revealed she stays awake all night with a fresh cup of tea for each of them just in case they should need it. Then in the Christmas special she freaks out at the new tea machine because she can't cope with the idea never making tea for them, and ends up destroying it to prevent this.

Also played straight with Jack's physical appearance - at first he was fairly clean but then got filthier-looking and uglier as the series progressed.

Floating Advice Reminder: In A Christmassy Ted. During some soul-searching, Ted is laughed at by the ghosts of Mrs Doyle, Father Jack, Dick Byrne, the cast of Ballykissangel... and finally Father Dougal, who doesn't appear to know why he's part of Ted's vision.

Former Regime Personnel: Father Fitzpatrick is shown to be an avid collector of Nazi war memorabilia. He's also been hiding a former Wehrmacht soldier for the last fifty years.

Combo Ensemble—Ted is sanguine/choleric, Jack is choleric/melancholic, Mrs. Doyle is melancholic/phlegmatic, and Dougal is phlegmatic/sanguine.

Other characters: Fathers Todd Unctious and Noel Furlong are sanguine 1000%, Bishop Brennan is choleric, Father Stack is melancholic, and Father Stone is the ultimate phlegmatic.

Freudian Trio: The protagonists fit the following arrangement: Jack is the Id, Ted the Ego, and Dougal the Superego (for all his ditziness, Dougal does seem to make more of an effort than Ted and Jack at being a good priest, or at least a good person.)

Friendly Local Chinatown: Craggy Island has one that Ted was completely oblivious to, due to being at a different parochial house for a few weeks.

The "Fun" in "Funeral": "DOUGAL'S DOING A FUNERAL?! YOU LET DOUGAL DO A FUNERAL!?!" Cut to the funeral itself, where the hearse is in the grave. And on fire.

Funny Background Event: As Ted suggests that Mrs Doyle is buying more milk just to see Pat Mustard every day, she appears in the back of the shot watering the plants with it.

Genius Ditz: While mostly a ditz, Dougal often shows signs of intelligence and excellent character judgements.

Genre Savvy: Cleverly parodied in "Speed 3", when the priests somehow realize that the answer to Dougal's life-threatening situation lies in the plot of an action film, but keep guessing the wrong one, first discussing The Towering Inferno and then watching The Poseidon Adventure ("Gene Hackman plays a priest in it!") in its entirety.

Geographic Flexibility: The only constant of Craggy Island's geography is that it has no west side - it just kind of broke off during a storm and drifted away. In some episodes it is incredibly tiny; in others it can contain an entire Chinatown that Ted has somehow never heard of. In the case of the Chinatown, Ted had been off at a different parochial house for several weeks, presumably the time it took for the Chinatown to be made.

Getting Crap Past the Radar: "Feck" is liberally used throughout the programme. Linehan and Matthews have tried to justify (with tongue firmly in cheek) its use, saying that it's a common exclamation in Ireland. Graham Norton freely admits: "It's just "fuck" with an "e" in it."

The Ghost: Several priests are referenced as one off gags. Father Bigley is the most frequently referenced of these. He apparently looks like he's dead, has blotchy skin and puffy lips and is an avid Dana fan. He also performed OJ Simpson's wedding and is currently in a home due to some fires.

Global Ignorance: In relation to the Geographic Flexibility above, when someone asks how to get to Craggy Island it's revealed that the island doesn't appear on any maps and the only way to know when you are near it is when you see British ships dumping nuclear waste. The general rule is that if you are going away from it you are heading in the right direction.

Father Ted: We wouldn't be on maps now Terry, we're not exactly New York!

The make-up work on Father Jack, including white and grey blue eyes, crusty lips, strange ruddy spots, stringy hair, and a perpetual snarl makes him quite possibly the ugliest thing to ever appear on TV. Frank Kelly has said that people wouldn't talk to him with his makeup onnote and fellow actors would avoid him during meals because the makeup was very realistic and bits would fall off into everyone's food, and Farscape actually based an alien priest on his appearance in the episode 'A Prefect Murder', of which a picture can be found here.

Pauline McLynn nearly didn't get the part of Mrs Doyle, because they felt she was too pretty. She turned up to a later audition with a terrible case of the flu, and the rest is history.

Heroic B.S.O.D.: Played for laughs (naturally) in the "Flight of Terror", when Father Ted climbs outside the aeroplane mid-flight to fix a cable. He's fine until the crisis is over...

Ted: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! What am I doing on this fecking wheel? AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!

He's next seen in the parochial house sitting room, still clinging to the wheel.

Hippie Van: In "Tentacles of Doom", a bishop who has just left the church says he's off to India with "a few friends." These turn out to be a cluster of hippies in a VW microbus, who beckon him in the open sliding door and hand him a joint as they drive off.

Honor Before Reason: In "Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep," Ted exposes a scam set up by a sheep's owner to ensure he wins the "best sheep award," resulting in the sheep being disqualified. Afterwards, Dougal reminds Ted that he bet their heating budget on that particular sheep to win, meaning that he caused him to lose it all.

Horrible Camping Trip: In "Hell", Ted is granted the use of a caravan for the weekend which turns out to be barely large enough to accommodate Ted, Dougal, and Jack. It begins pouring with rain almost as soon as they get settled in (and Dougal has forgotten to pack any board games, reducing them to hide-and-seek and the famous "Small... far away" explanation of perspective), the only nearby attractions are St Kevin's Stump (an ordinary tree stump) and the Magic Road (on which objects roll uphill in defiance of gravity), the caravan turns out to have been double-booked to Father Noel Furlong and his youth group (who cause the caravan to fall on its side with a re-enactment of Riverdance), and Ted and Dougal repeatedly anger a fellow camper who ultimately leaves them stranded on a country road with four slashed tyres.

Humiliating Wager: The title character was famously made to kick Bishop Brennan up the arse as the forfeit for a lost football match between elderly priests (technically Ted's team won the match, but he was disqualified for cheating).

Mrs Doyle hates the language in modern novels; in fact she hates it so much that she spends five minutes using all of the language that she hates.

Mrs Doyle: "Ride me sideways" was another one!note That line was actually ad-libbed by Pauline McLynn and caused Dermot Morgan to break up. If you watch closely, you can see that the scene is cut just as he is about to laugh out loud.

Another example from Mrs Doyle is her talk of how much she hates sex. "..can you imagine Father, your husband, with his lad in his hand, ready to do the business, wanting you to degrade yourself...Get a good mental picture there!" Ted is eating a sausage at the time.

In "Speed 3", after Ted confronts Pat Mustard about using his job as a milkman to father illegitimate children across Craggy Island, suggesting that he should be more careful in the bedroom, Pat turns it around and asks if Ted's suggesting that he use artificial contraception?

I Did What I Had to Do: The whole of "Think Fast, Father Ted", where Ted holds a raffle in order to raise money to repair the leaking roof, is riddled with this. But not more so than in the case of the raffle's DJ, Father Billy O'Dwyer, who ends up stealing the raffle money to pay off the debts run up by his huge gambling problem.

Informed Attribute: We all know that Larry Duff is "great fun". Unfortunately, he's never in a situation to demonstrate it.

Injury Bookend: In "Are You Right There Father Ted?" Mrs Doyle falls down the stairs and hurts her back, leading to trouble walking, a hunched posture, and inability to do most of her usual work. Ted tries to help (against her violent protests) but just makes it worse. At the end of the episode, she trips, falls down the stairs again, and is cured.

Innocent Innuendo: "Oh, Pat was wondering if he could put his massive tool in my box?"

In "Think Fast, Father Ted", they damage a car they're about to raffle off. Dougal thinks that cheating in the raffle to get the money back would be morally wrong. Ted convinces Dougal otherwise with this brilliant deduction:

Father Ted: Dougal, seriously, listen: if Bishop Brennan finds out we wrecked the car, he will kill us. And murder is a terrible, terrible sin, Dougal. So, by committing this little sin, we'll actually be saving a bishop's soul.

Iron Buttmonkey: Father Larry Duff, who seems to at best have terrible luck, and at worst suffer horrific injuries, almost every single time Ted calls him.

I Was Having Such a Nice Dream: Used in "A Christmassy Ted". Ted's dreaming about taking Peter Clifford's place in Ballykissangel and has just started kissing Assumpta when he's rudely awoken by Dougal. When Ted actually goes back to sleep, he's dreaming about being chased by giant peanuts instead.

Dougal: TED! TED! Would you like a peanut?

I Will Only Slow You Down: Part of the war movie parody in the Christmas special, after a priest is hit in the eye by a snapping bra strap.

Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Ted zigzags around this trope. There are times when he displays real kindness and humanity (talking a priest out of suicide) only for an ulterior motive to be revealed (the priest owed him money). That said, he does seem to care about Jack and Dougal and even possess genuine faith (he's noticeably horrified when Dougal expresses disbelief - though this is just more of the same high-handed hypocrisy).

The plane is a BAe 146 viewed from the outside, but the interior is of a much larger wide-body aircraft. Of course, the interior of a BAe 146 isn't nearly big enough for a soundstage.

Who keeps parachutes on passenger aircraft? You can't evacuate a plane in mid-air.

The doors on a passenger plane cannot possibly open in mid-air like they did in this episode, they aren't designed to do that. There is no way that Jack could have gotten out with the drinks tray then. This also means the scene where Ted climbs on the outside of the plane in mid-air is implausible.

Kavorka Man: Pat Mustard, the disgustingly sleazy milkman who somehow manages to seduce every woman on his route. And have children with a lot of likenesses to him with them.

Lampshade Hanging: Father Jack frequently exits from the living room by screaming and jumping through the window. This gets lampshaded in the Christmas special, where he attempts to do so only to bounce back from the glass. Ted remarks to the room "We thought he was jumping through the old window a bit too often... That's why we had the plexiglass put in"

Ted: Not a lot of people have, Dougal, so it's probably a bad reference.

Also the inspiration for the in-universe "My Lovely Horse" - a B-side to a runner up in A Song for Norway sung by a band no-one has ever heard of (Nin Huegen and the Huguenotes) in 1976, released shortly before everyone involved in writing, performing, producing and distributing the song was killed in a plane crash. Dougal must be one of the very few owners of this record and even he has only listened to the B-side once.

Ted: ...so it would be fair to say that not a lot of people have heard this song?

Large Ham: Everyone. Every extra, every one-scene character, will act as though they are chewing 900lbs of pork. The world of Father Ted is a quintessential World of Ham. But for specific examples:

Bishop Brennan has to be in RRRRROME tomorrow to meet with the holy father!

Ted, when he gets angry or excited.

One of the priests stuck in the lingerie section in the Christmas special has an exciting dramatic voice played for laughs.

Father Reilly:[loudly]Ted! Were you asking for a dramatic, exciting voice!?Father Fitzgerald:No. He said boring. He wanted a boring voice.Father Reilly:In that case, you must excuse me for my impetuous interruption!

Manchild: Father Dougal. Eoin McLove manages to be an even bigger one.

The Masochism Tango: John and Mary try to keep up a Happily Marriedfaçade in front of the priests but the rest of the time it's blindingly obvious that they completely and utterly loathe each other. The first time they're introduced, Mary's put John in hospital with a knife wound.

May–December Romance: Sixty-something year old Pat Mustard and many of the women on Craggy Island whom he had affairs with on his milk rounds, and who subsequently became pregnant with his children. As they were able to have children, they were presumably much younger than Pat Mustard.

Mean Character, Nice Actor: Suffice it to say, when Ted envisions Jack as a friendly, nice-looking old man in a rocking chair singing "In Apple Blossom Time", it was still Frank Kelly.

Used in the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading". The priests try to give up their vices for Lent, but soon go into withdrawal and hallucinate one another as the objects of their addiction (giant talking cigarettes or pints of Guinness) speaking gibberish.

In his DVD commentary co-writer Graham Linehan points out that this is a fairly routine gag until we get to see Dougal's point of view - Ted as a giant rollerblade shoe.

Megaton Punch: Bishop Brennan manages to launch Ted several feet through the air, although this was likely not with a punch but with a high-powered kick up the arse, as Ted had done to him.

Father Jack's response to hearing that Father Stone is visiting is to punch Ted out of the window.

Father Ted: Mrs. Doyle's right! Remember last year, Mrs. Dunn, when your husband tried to wash a cup, and burned the house down. And Mrs. Collins, when Mr. Collins tried to make the bed on his own...(dramatic pause)...and lost a leg.

Metaphorgotten: In the Christmas special, when Mrs Doyle is describing the process of making tea:

Mrs Doyle: The playful splash of the tea as it hits the bottom of the cup. The thrill of adding the milk, and watching it settle for a moment, before it filters slowly down, turning the tea from dark brown to a lighter brown. Perching an optional Jaffa Cake on the side, like a proud soldier, standing to attention beside a giant... cup of tea.

Mistaken for Racist: Zig-zagged with Ted in "Are You Right There Father Ted?". He does an impression of Chinese people which genuinely is racist, but his sincere attempts to make amends are torpedoed due to a hilarious series of misunderstandings.

"So Father, I hear you're now a racist!"

Mood Whiplash: Played for Laughs with the two Craggy Island locals who accuse Ted of being racist. After Ted angrily dismisses them and goes back inside the parochial house, the pair calmly discuss the local news.

Mundane Made Awesome: Ted leading a group of priests lost in a store's lingerie department to safety to avoid a possible scandal is treated as a war-movie parody of a unit stuck deep in enemy territory. The final scene of the priests walking out of an exist is played with dramatic music and slow-motion, which makes it look like Ted is throwning his men out of an airplane like they are paratroopers.

Mushroom Samba: Jack tends to hallucinate whenever he drinks Toilet Duck. He sees Ted as incredibly creepy when holding up three fingers.

My God, What Have I Done?: Ted, after his prayer to have Father Stone go away by any means results in Stone getting struck by lightning.

Poor Mrs Millet in "Speed 3" answers the door in the nude because she expects her milkman to be Kavorka Man Pat Mustard. She gets Dougal instead, although it takes him several hours to process what he's seen.

In "Hell", Ted and Dougal wander into the wrong caravan while a naked man walks out of the shower. He later chases after them while wearing only a towel and he winds up clinging to Ted's car for several miles after his towel has fallen off.

Nice Mean And In Between: Dougal is fairly nice and pleasant, despite his dim-witted nature. Alcoholic Jack is prone to violent rages, which makes him mean. Finally, Ted, who is a corrupt schemer with sympathetic moments, comes off as in-between.

Nice Character, Mean Actor: In "Night of the Nearly Dead", Eoin McLove's onstage persona is the son any mother would love to have, a charmer who loves homemade cakes and pies and comfy jumpers. When the cameras are off, he is a sulking, petulant Manchild who hates the middle-to-old-aged women who make up his core audience, is rude and abrasive to Mrs. Doyle when he visits Craggy Island after she wins his poetry competition (the fact that she baked a hand-knitted jumper into the cake she serves him does not help), and openly steals two suitcases' worth of odds and ends from the parochial house while it is besieged by thousands of his fans. (Although he does have an excuse for both his tendency to aim his music at an older crowd and his bad temper when the cameras are off: as he tells Ted and co., "I have no willy.")

The "Sealink incident," which we are told involved Dougal and the controls of a Sealink ferry, although Noel Furlong tactfully shushes Dougal before he can give too many details.

In "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading"—where they seem determined to push this trope to its breaking point:

Father Ted: Dougal, Dougal, do you remember Sister Assumpta?

Dougal: Er, no.

Father Ted: She was here last year! And then we stayed with her in the convent, back in Kildare. Do you remember it? Ah, you do! And then you were hit by the car when you went down to the shops for the paper. You must remember all that? And then you won a hundred pounds with your lottery card? Ah, you must remember it, Dougal!

[Dougal shakes his head]

Sr. Assumpta: And weren't you accidentally arrested for shoplifting? I remember we had to go down to the police station to get you!... And the police station went on fire? And you had to be rescued by helicopter?

Father Ted: Do you remember? You can't remember any of that? The helicopter! When you fell out of the helicopter! Over the zoo! Do you remember the tigers?

[Dougal shakes his head some more]

Father Ted: You don't remember? You were wearing your blue jumper.

Dougal:Ah, Sister Assumpta!

And, of course, the Lourdes incident involving Ted, a trip to Las Vegas and a sick child whose money he allegedly took. All we know is that the money was just resting in his account.

How Jack got to Craggy Island: the infamous "Wedding in Athlone."

From "Are You Right There Father Ted":

Dougal: It's like that time we put on that variety show, and you did that impression of Stephen Hawking.

Ted: He was the last person you'd expect to turn up. That was a million to one chance. God, he can fairly move that wheelchair when he's angry...

Ted mentions that a friend of his, Father Jimmy Ranable, was a student of Jack's in his heyday. Dougal asks what happened to Jimmy and Ted tells him that "The Drumshanbo Massacre" was his doing.

Another priest is mentioned as having been "involved in that whole OJ Simpson thing".

Yet another priest was once caught smuggling arms into Iraq.

No Name Given: Mrs. Doyle. Whenever anyone says her first name, it's drowned out by a conveniently timed stock sound effect.

Not So Different: Ted's bitter rivalry with Dick Byrne appears to be borne of the fact that they're carbon copies of one another, even extending to their violent alcoholic and "poor, strange idiot-boy" priests who live with them in an identical house.

"Still it must be fun though... not the... y'know... but... well... having boyfriends when you're a man and the general rough and tumble of homosexual activity."

Not This One, That One: When Father Ted and Dougal go on a caravan holiday, they are terribly excited at the size of the caravan they've borrowed, but discover that it's not theirs, it's just so big it's totally concealing the shed-sized caravan they actually got.

Virtually every priest or nun in the series, definitely including the protagonists. Father Ted is a gambling-addicted embezzler, Father Jack is a foul-mouthed, violent, alcoholic womanizer, and Father Dougal openly mocks the teachings of the church.

Many of the one shot clergy members crank this Up to 11. Examples include Father Williams, who was caught with a box of machineguns in his house and is shot by the Army over it, Father Billy, "The Spinmaster", a gambling addict who owes some dodgy types a large amount of money and ends up stealing the Craggy Island Parochial House new roof fund, Father Todd Unctious, who tries to steal Ted's golden cleric award and steals another priest's clothing "because it seemed to be the way things were going", and the thoroughly vile Father Fintan Stack.

One-Hour Work Week: The priests' parish duties are virtually non-existent. Ted says about two Masses (one on a mobile altar being towed by a tractor), has some bishops to stay once, and eagerly tells Dougal all the salacious details a parishioner had just given him in confession in one episode.

Only Shop in Town: The shop run by John and Mary seems to be the only one on Craggy Island.

Out-of-Character Moment: "Sheep" reveals that on leap years Jack turns into a cheerful, free-spirit whenever it's Autumn. Ted laments that it doesn't last long.

Overly Long Gag: Mrs Doyle trying to get Fr. Todd Unctious' name by sheer blunt-force guessing, suggesting random combinations of names and random words. And succeeding.

Overly Narrow Superlative: It's amazing how simply changing a word of any ordinary bit of hyperbole to "priest" has this effect. "The most sarcastic man in Ireland" wouldn't cause you to bat an eyelid, but "the most sarcastic priest in Ireland"...

Parachute in a Tree: In one episode, during a flight emergency, Jack takes the plane's two parachutes and attaches the second one to the drinks trolley. As the credits roll, we see Jack and the trolley both stuck in the tree, with Jack vainly trying to reach it.

Pardon My Klingon: "Feck" to non-Irish viewers. Feck is a mild curse in Ireland. Interestingly enough, the word has its own history completely unrelated to the err..other F word, although it is commonly used as a milder version of it.

Pass the Popcorn: In "Night of the Nearly Dead", hordes of middle-aged women have descended on the Parochial House to see crooner Eoin McLove, and have punched through the front door to grab him after he retreats back into the house. Ted, Dougal, and McLove's manager Patsy are trying to break the women's grip on McLove, while Jack... fetches a chair and a drink and sits back to watch.

Patriotic Fervour: Jack's insistence on standing for the French national anthem is exploited when Ted needs to find a way to stop him crushing another priest by sitting on him.

Though Ted is occasionally shown to say Mass (including once on a mobile altar being towed by a tractor), and once talks about a confession he took, Dougal and Jack are never seen doing any priestly things. Justified by Dougal's status as The Ditz and Jack as The Alcoholic - you wouldn't want them doing any work either. The implication is that all three of them have been Reassigned to Antarctica.

Jack is, theoretically, a retired priest, and Ted and Dougal are, theoretically, his caretakers. In practice, Craggy Island is a place where particularly unpleasant priests are sent to rot with keepers selected from otherwise undesirables. Leads to We Want Our Jerk Back when Jack gets too sick for Ted and Dougal to look after any more, and a much younger (and even less pleasant) priest is sent to Craggy Island for them to keep.

Lampshaded when Dougal becomes a milkman and Ted is unable to think of any parish duty that would prevent him from doing so.

Dougal: Ooh, I'd love to be a milkman for a bit. There's feck all to do around here...

It's pretty clear, though, that all three priests know very little about Catholicism. Jack is permanently drunk, Dougal is the resident ditz and even Ted forgets that the church traditionally has condemned gayness, has papal infallibility and even says that God is the most forgiving "of all gods".

Ted doesn't agree with many aspects of religion and even implies he's only a priest because it was traditional in his family for the least intelligent brother to become a priest. He also says 'the pope says things he doesn't really mean'.

"Night of the Nearly Dead" reveals that despite being a Catholic Priest, Ted doesn't even know the birth name of the Pope.

Pocket Protector: In "Old Grey Whistle Theft", we hear that the eponymous whistle saved the life of a previous owner. He was being executed by the British, and all the bullets hit the whistle, and bounced off. Subverted in that the British simply reloaded and shot him again.

The Pratfall: Mrs. Doyle wins a date for tea with her idol, TV heartthrob Eoin McLove. When she meets him, she begins shaking uncontrollably, then goes rigid as a board and falls right over on her arse.

Ted tears the place apart like a madman searching for a bug placed by the Rugged Island priests... who are indeed spying on him in their ice cream van outside.

He also instructs Dougal to guard the corner flags against theft. It's obviously just to keep him out of the way, but Dougal takes it seriously- and turns out to be right in doing so when Burne sends Cyril to steal one as a souvenir.

Protest By Obstruction: Ted and Dougal chained themselves to the railing in front of a cinema. Backfired spectacularly as their protest against The Passion of St. Tibulus made the film a huge success.

The Psycho Rangers: The Rugged Island priests. Dick is basically a more evil version of Ted and his two companions are almost exactly like Dougal and Jack.

Reckless Gun Usage: John in one scene, after the island is gripped by hysteria after a whistle is stolen, mentions that he keeps his shotgun cocked and armed so he can get the drop on him. He then demonstrates poor trigger discipline, waves it around like a Majorette's baton, and points it at Ted, whilst slamming it down on the counter at the same time. We hear it go off when Ted leaves the shop, thanks to Mary attempting to wrestle in from John's grasp.

Red Oni, Blue Oni: Zigzagged—at first Ted appears to be the more sensible, level-headed one, until you realize that he cares more about material possessions and wealth than spirituality and is perfect willing to throw away any scruples he might otherwise have in order to pursue some shallow goal(which is sometimes money but may also be beating Dick Byrne in some childish challenge), whereas Dougal for all his ditziness at least makes more of an effort to be a good priest or at least a good person; moreover, he is also calmer and less excitable than Ted.

Dougal figures that Ted Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse is so ridiculous, Brennan himself wouldn't believe it. Sure enough, Bishop Brennan gets kicked up the arse and it only occurs to him that this is what happened when he's having an audience with the Pope, upon which he runs full pelt back to Ireland, where Ted is able to convince him that Ted kicking the Bishop up the arse is too ridiculous to have actually happened, which the bishop believes.... until he sees a giant photograph of the act.

Father Todd Unctious, and how he infiltrates the trio's house comes down to this.

Repeated Cue, Tardy Response: Ted needs to hold a raffle for a prize that isn't his to give away, so he rigs the draw by giving Dougal the winning ticket. Dougal remains oblivious after the number is called several times, responding only when Ted addresses him directly.

Reset Button: Unusually played at the beginning of an episode rather than at the end. The episode 'A Christmassy Ted' referred to all charges against Ted over the 'Lourdes thing' dropped (the original offence which got him sent to Craggy Island). The first episode of the next series showed him at his luxurious new parish...before an auditor discovers irregularities in the parish accounts sending him right back to Craggy Island.

Rule of Funny: As per Graham Linehan's over-the-top Signature Style. He's stated in interview that when everyone knows how farce comedy works and everything is running on the Rule of Funny anyway, attempting to make the scenarios at all "realistic" is just patronising and detracts from the potential humour. Hence things like the perfectly square bit of dirt, which he could have come up with a credulity-stretching Hand Wave for, but why bother? Without one, the setup for the joke is a surreal sight gag in itself.

Ted calling Father Larry Duff on his mobile just when he's doing something important and messing him up because of it. On one occasion he fell of a cliff while trying to find his phone. Another time he lost a ten thousand pound contest which required intense concentration.

Mrs Doyle's constant tea offering is one of the most famous running gags. Her dedication to tea making is frankly disturbing. She asks over and over and over. Once, she asked via a very large series of written signs when the music was up too loud to talk. Another time when Ted came downstairs in the middle of the night, she was standing perfectly still next to the door holding a tray of tea, six inches from Ted's face when he turned the light on. She also offered tea to a man who had just explained he was deathly allergic to it, although he left before she could really press him.

People on Craggy Island sure do jump out of windows a lot...

John and Mary, the 'loving couple' that keep trying to kill each other.

Mrs Doyle falling off the window bench whenever she stands on it to clean something or hang something up. It's resolved in the final episode, when she creates a pulley system that lets her glide off the bench.

Ted would like you to know that that money was just "resting in his account".

Scatting: The priests' performance of "La Marseillaise" in "A Christmassy Ted" is an incoherent mumble with no distinct words, English or French. (Although the mouth movements of at least one priest do roughly correspond with the French words.)

"Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The mysterious sheep-eating beast, described by Dougal as follows:

Incidentally, four-arsed creations became a recurring theme on South Park some years later.

Separated by a Common Language: In "Cigarettes And Alcohol And Rollerblading", the phrase that forms (in Ted's mind at least) from John's cigarette smoke takes on a whole new meaning if you're American.

Senior Sleep Cycle: Father Jack seemingly spends his entire life sleeping when he isn't drinking or yelling obscenities.

"There's nothing at all stupid about the All-Priests Over-75's Five-a-Side Football Championship Match! Against Rugged Island." (Or the All Priests Stars in Their Eyes Lookalike Competition, for that matter.)

The theft of a whistle prompting Craggy Island's one policeman to start doing helicopter sweeps and the Islanders to start locking themselves in the basement in case they're brutally murdered.

According to Ted, only Priests' Socks are actually black. All other "black" socks are just really, really, really, really, really, REALLY dark blue.

In "A Song for Europe", Ted's Atomic F-Bomb speech when they can't write the song ("Just play the f***ing note") is a shout out to a legendary 1970 rehearsal tape of The Troggs having a studio bust-up.

In Series 3, the farmer who hires two idiots to frighten his sheep, so that he can stage its recovery and win the competition - and therefore a lot of money - with it, is called Fargo. Doubles as Foreshadowing for The Reveal.

The two idiots are themselves a shout out to money-obsessed schemer Brian Quigley's two dozy incompetent henchmen in Ballykissangel (another more mainstream Irish comedy-drama).

Shur Fine Guns: Averted by John's shotgun. He slams it down on the counter, causing Ted to jump, but it doesn't go off. John finds this hilarious.

Similar Squad: The Rugged Island priests. They live in the same type of house as Ted, Dougal and Jack and have almost the exact same personalities, except that Dick Byrne is even more of a Jerkass than Ted is.

Snipe Hunt: In the All-Priests Over-75s football match, Ted gives Dougal the task of guarding the corner flags against theft. This becomes relevant when Dick Byrne sends the equally-inept Cyril to steal one as a souvenir.

Spot of Tea: While tea drinking is generally associated with the English, the Republic of Ireland are just about equally notorious. Ireland's obession with tea is represented by Mrs. Doyle. "Tea, father?" "Oh, you will, you will, you will."

Head Milkman: You'd better get going. Milk goes sour you know - unless it's UHT milk, but there's no demand for that because it's shite.

Strange Minds Think Alike: Weird example in "Speed 3" when Ted's think-tank team of priests seem to independently work out that the episode is a Whole Plot Reference to an action film and the answer must lie in such a film, yet constantly pick the wrong ones which bear no relevance to the crisis, such as The Towering Inferno. More hilariously, they only pick The Poseidon Adventure because Gene Hackman plays a priest in it. He doesn't even say Mass!

Straw Feminist: Niamh Connolly is an Up to 11 example of this trope, being stridently anti-Catholic - as befits her status as a thinly-veiled parody of Sinead O'Connor:

Connolly: And the Church in Ireland actually shut down a lot of the factories that were making the potatoes and turned them into prisons for children.

Ted: There you go! She says that like there's something sinister about it!

Strawman Political: Played for laughs with Bishop Brennan who is designed to represent the worst aspects of the Catholic Church in Ireland. He is rude, a bully, a hypocrite (He lives in glamourous surroundings and a woman in a hottub while the priests barely scrape by) and has a secret child living in America.

Streisand Effect (In-Universe): The church's protests at "The Passion of St. Tibulus" result only in the film's overwhelming popularity.

Suicide Mission: When Ted and Dougal really manage to piss Brennan off, Ted fears they will be sent off to do missionary work somewhere especially dangerous, with the ultimate aim of getting some of the natives to sacrifice them to Volcano Gods.

Brennan: Ah, there's a lovely little island off the coast of Suriname, and they have a couple of tribes there — you're going to love this! — and they have been knocking the shit out of each other since 1907! And we have never found the right man to bring them together in the spirit of Christian harmony, but I think that you, Ted, are the man.

Ted: Well...thanks very much.

Brennan: Don't thank me, don't thank me...by the way, do you know how to make arrows?

In the Christmas Special, Ted announces that he is looking forward to "A nice quiet Christmas with no unusual incidents or strange people turning up. That would suit me down to the ground."

In "The Mainland" when Ted suggests he say "I don't believe it" to Richard Wilson. According to Dougal, "Serious Ted, that is a fantastic idea. This is one of those times when I'm absolute one hundred million per cent sure that you'd be doing the right thing. I can safely say you definitely, definitely won't regret doing that!"

Training from Hell: Parodied when the priests give up cigarettes, alcohol and rollerblading for Lent. The nun sent to then wakes them early, bathes them in ice, drags them from a tractor, shoots at them with a revolver and makes them sleep on bricks.

Trope Codifier: Father Ted builds on earlier more mainstream TV sitcoms about priests, religion, and religious hierarchy, taking the themes and settings of earlier shows like Bless Me Father and Oh Brother! and taking them Up to 11 and beyond. Without Derek Nimmo's relatively innocuous portrayal of a Church of England vicar in an otherwise anodyne sixties sitcom, there might have been no "Father Ted".

T-Word Euphemism: In one episode, Mrs Doyle has been reading the works of a lady novelist staying at the parochial house and is shocked by the language. She refers to "the F-word", but this being Father Ted has to clarify "The bad F-word. [Not feck] Worse than feck."

The Unfettered: Father Jack is completely unafraid to say what little he has on his mind.

We Want Our Jerk Back: At first Ted and Dougal are thrilled when Jack gets a contagious disease and has to be sent away. Then it turns out his replacement takes Jack's Jerkass qualities Up to 11 until they're driven to kidnap him back.

Wheelchair Antics: From one episode: "Honestly, what kind of situation would require the use of a pair of fake arms and a remote-controlled wheelchair? Only, I imagine, a completely ludicrous one!"

Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Craggy Island is off the West coast of Ireland, but apparently appears on no maps. Getting there involves heading West from Galway until one comes across British ships dumping nuclear waste in the area. The general idea is if you're heading away from Craggy Island, you're going in the right direction.

Wrong Genre Savvy: Ted and his fellow priests just can't work out where they've heard the plot of the episode "Speed 3" before.

X Must Not Win: In the episode "Cigarettes and Alcohol and Rollerblading", after being goaded into giving up something for Lent by Father Dick Byrne, Ted gives Dougal a lecture on the importance of Lent, something far more important than the sacrifices made by Jesus as the latter points out, but beating Dick Byrne at his bet.

Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: In one episode, Ted is seen doing a racist "Chinaman" impression through the window of the church by a group of Chinese passers-by. He runs after them to apologize, only to be stopped by a couple of locals who applaud him for "standing up" to them and ask how they, too, can become full-time racists. Ted is horrified.

Zombie Apocalypse: Spoofed in the main plot of "Night of the Nearly Dead", in which hordes of elderly women descend upon the parochial house to get a glimpse of singer Eoin McLove.

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